I hope everyone had a good time with friends, family and/or lovers to bring in the new year. I was lucky to spend the evening eating at Shogun with a few folks (you know who you are) till our belts were tight. The remainder of the evening was pretty sedate though. 2008 came in with no bang and no fanfare. It was nice actually.

I got my new year off to a good start by joining a local gym to work on my endurance. I don’t have a weight issue… I just have to get myself in overall better physical shape so I’m not huffing and puffing after some light activity like I was on the rock climbing shoot from December. Sheesh. I’m working my way up on weights and distances on the bikes and treadmills. I’m also putting a LOT of mileage on my iPod now. Prior to working out, my iPod was only used on rare occasions. Now I use it regularly.

On the photography side of things, I finally got a respectable set of studio lights. Rock on. Now I just have to spend time working and practicing with them. That’s what I spent last Sunday afternoon doing. A big thanks goes to Amber for assisting me as well as taking a few shots of the action while I was working. A big thanks also goes to Tiffany and Josh for being my guinea pigs for this occasion. I’ve got more work to go though till I get the results I’m wanting. But you know what? It’s a fun learning process that I enjoy.

Guess what I did last night?

I attended a beekeeping class over in Huntsville. I got an email from the Huntsville Botanical Garden letting me know about the series so I thought I would check it out. I was curious about the whole beekeeping process an industry and it seemed like a good way to get my feet wet. The class was packed and the topics were interesting. I’ve got no plans to start some sort of honey-based empire though. Just curious. Now I know how you get bees, how to build the hives, how to put the bees in the hive, how to trap bees… etc.

I’ll end my first post of the year with a sample shot from my Sunday experimentation.